ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, October 5, 1996 TAG: 9610070061
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: From The Washington Post and The Associated Press
The 104th Congress formally adjourned Friday after a brief House session in which lawmakers passed more than a dozen measures and sent them to President Clinton.
Because most House members left Washington to campaign for re-election after the House finished the bulk of its work late last Saturday, all the work of Friday's 52-minute session was done without roll-call votes. Only 13 lawmakers were present, seven of whom are not seeking re-election. They included Rep. Robert S. Walker, R-Pa., who presided.
House Speaker Newt Gingrich was campaigning for GOP candidates in North Carolina and Michigan, while Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., was at party headquarters several blocks away making fund-raising telephone calls, according to aides.
It was quite a change from the boisterous House session on Jan. 3, 1995, that began this Congress, the first in 40 years to be controlled by Republicans. Nearly 500 people - lawmakers, their families and former members - jammed the floor that day, and work went on until early the next morning.
The House had been meeting in perfunctory daily sessions this week while waiting for the Senate to finish its work, which it did Thursday. It marked the earliest date Congress had gone home since 1976, another election year, when the final gavel fell on Oct.1.
Among the bills cleared for Clinton was a measure that would stiffen penalties for possession of the ``date-rape drug,'' the tranquilizer Rohypnol, for use in a violent crime, including sexual assault.
Rohypnol, a prescription drug that is illegal in the United States, has no taste, odor or color when dissolved in a drink and is 10 to 20 times more powerful than Valium. People under the influence of the drug - known as a ``roofie'' - have trouble moving their arms and legs, eventually pass out and later have little or no memory of what happened. It has been linked with sexual assaults on college campuses around the nation.
Another measure would require that the White House comply with 11 federal laws intended to protect employees from discrimination, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act and the law that requires employers to give workers unpaid leave to deal with family illnesses. The legislation closely tracks a bill, which is now law, by which Congress applied labor laws to itself.
The pace was so brisk Friday - 14 measures were passed and sent to the president in less than 30 minutes - that lawmakers approved one bill before House Rules Committee Chairman Gerald Solomon, R-N.Y., who was managing action for the Republicans, had the paperwork for the next.
Among the measures the House sent Clinton on Friday were those that would:
*Authorize the minting of commemorative coins for baseball great and civil rights activist Jackie Robinson, Revolutionary War patriot Crispus Attucks and others.
*Extend the visas of foreign nurses in hopes of easing some communities' nursing shortages.
The final measure to pass was to establish the Cache La Poudre River National Water Heritage Area in Colorado. Rep. Pat Schroeder, D-Colo., who is leaving the House after 24 years, expressed appreciation at the bill's passage. ``You would wait until the last one,'' she teasingly admonished Solomon, with whom she had sometimes clashed on the House floor.
``I just wanted to make sure,'' Solomon replied, ``that the gentle lady had the last word.''
LENGTH: Medium: 67 linesby CNB